Coconut is totally the most popular kid in school right now, it really is. In the nutrition world, it’s making an appearance mostly everywhere you turn. Coconut water, milk, butter, flour & oil (and that’s without even mentioning actual coconut the fruit)! I personally love coconut. I always have some handy for desserts (in the form of coconut meat and shavings) and for my favorite curry (coconut milk) that I love to make when I’m feeling low or ready for something warm with some character! Coconut for desserts is really amazing. It gives a dish that really delicate flavor that is sweet, but not too sweet and really satisfying to the palate.
Coconut oil is my primary source of oil when cooking now a days because of it’s versatility. Being a naturally occurring saturated fat, it is a great source of medium chain fatty acids (MCFA’s), as opposed to long chain fatty acids-being smaller, these MCFA’s, are easily digested and immediately burned by your liver for energy. Thus, like carbohydrates, but without the insulin spike. MCTs actually boost your metabolism and help your body use fat for energy, as opposed to storing it, so it can actually help you become leaner.
In my cooking, and at Chloe’s Countertop– I generally stick to three fats. The first, cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil is the best monounsaturated fat and works great raw, as a salad dressing or in raw dips like hummus. However, olive oil should not be used for cooking. Due to its chemical structure, heat makes olive oil susceptible to oxidative damage. So for cooking, I use coconut oil or organic butter almost exclusively (of course, there are times when I have used olive oil in my cooking, due to not having butter handy and not wanting my dish to have the coconut oil flavor).
All the rest of the oils (vegetable oil, sunflower, safflower, canola oil, hemp seed oil) I suggest that you use less of or not at all in the kitchen and in your cooking. With fats in general they are highly susceptible to three factors: heat, oxygen and light. When they are exposed to one or all three of these factors, oxidative stress occurs and free radicals are created which are highly damaging to your body, especially when they build up. Not to mention, most of these vegetable oils that you find on the shelf (large bottles for cheap prices- tricking you into thinking that you are being ‘smart’ and ‘saving a buck’) are genetically modified (GMO) products and have been put the process of partial or full hydrogenation where chemically a hydrogen atom is attached to the molecule to make the product more stable and to increase their shelf-life.
The downside to this process is it creates more free radicals, thus increasing the oxidative stress on your body. Finally, the kicker to this information session on oils is that most of these vegetable oils throw off the balance of your bodies omega 6 and omega 3 levels which creates a pro-inflammatory state in your body (this is what is being understood now as a supportive environment in your body for disease to flourish).
Luckily, in this recipe- I used coconut oil & more so, this is a raw dish that can be used as a dessert, snack, quick breakfast during and on-the-go type of day OR a really great pre-workout snack to get a quick, healthy shot of glucose to your blood stream to help increase the available energy that your body (and brain) needs to perform.
This recipe was inspired by one of my favorite blogger’s The Rawtarian
